Herkimer Crystals

Herkimer Crystals are quartz. Although they are sometimes called "Herkimer Diamonds", they are not the carbon based diamonds that are cut and polished to make engagement rings and other expensive jewelry. They are silicon based quartz crystals that have acquired their pseudo-name because they are mined primarily in Herkimer County, NY and have natural eighteen-sided faceting that is described as ‘diamond like’ in appearance.


Herkimer crystals are clear quartz crystals that are sold as collection specimens, as healing stones, and are fashioned into jewelry and novelty pieces. This site features herkimer crystals in a variety of products for the specimen collector, jewelry wearer, and the spiritually oriented person who appreciates the healing and awakening power of these stones.

There are many locations open to the public for mining herkimer crystals. People can find these crystals by looking in the tailings left on the ground by more serious miners, or by chipping at the rock surfaces with small hammers and chisels. More serious hand mining requires 10-12 pound sledge hammers and specially sharpened, flat rock-splitting chisels make from car and truck leaf springs; moving tons of rock at a time yet maintaining a hand-mined quality to the crystals. Commercial mining operations employ large earth moving equipment, jackhammers, hydraulic rock splitters, and other modern power equipment.


The crystals presented and sold on this site have all been mined only with hand tools, sometimes taking over a week to move over 20 tons of solid rock to reveal a single pocket in the table layer of the formation. This site includes a photo album of serious hand mining.


Pockets can be between a few inches and five feet in diameter and can vary from being empty to containing dozens of large specimens from (1” to 8”), hundreds of jewelry sized crystals (e.g., 0.2” to 1”), and thousands of tiny specimens; called micro crystals. The smaller specimens are usually the clearest and brightest, and become more opaque and fractured as they move into the larger ranges. Therefore, larger clear crystals command higher prices on the market. Natural clusters can be extracted from a pocket intact. However, most times these have become separated by earth changes over the last 500 million years. Therefore, they can be reconstructed with tremendous patience and small amounts of epoxy to hold them back in their original contact positions.


Inside the crystals are internal treasures that make them even more fascinating. Some crystals contain the black carbon of ancient decayed plants, called anthraxolite. You can find ‘enhydro’ crystals which containing ancient water bubbles deep within their structure. Some enhydro crystals have trapped gasses along with the water, creating an air bubble that moves within the crystal as it is tilted, and a particle of anthraxolite floating in the mix. Some pockets can also contain skeletal crystals (incomplete formations leaving a skeletal structure), tabby (tabular shaped) and phantoms (crystals formed within crystals) and scepters (later generation crystals formed atop previous shafts or crystal formations).


When people see the beautifully angled facets of the Herkimer crystal pendant that I wear, some have difficulty believing they are not cut and polished by a lapidary. I say, “That’s how they look coming right out of the ground. Faceted by nature - designed by God. They follow the same laws of crystallization that form simple sugar or salt crystals; in their particular case- having eighteen faces and two points (terminations).”
When I am asked why so many healers and new age practitioners wear crystal pendants, I tell them to look into how quartz ham radios and watches work. Many metaphysical practitioners claim that the herkimer quarts crystals, being cut and shaped naturally, react to outside electromagnetic energies (sun, moon, people, animals, etc.) by filtering and transforming these energies to the correct frequencies for the body and soul. The herkimer crystal conducts the healing and awakening frequencies to their bodies and beams it out to the people nearby. They also say the presence of a quartz crystal pendant worn above their hearts amplifies and broadcasts their heart’s higher spiritual energies to the people around them. In a sense, the sun and the powerful light of the heart are the batteries of this spiritual instrument.